2007 Ford Mustang GT - Land Of The Lost

It's a cartoon. We just nutshelled the whole reason you're seeing this car in these pages. It's exaggerated, goofy, and bright, and it made us grin from the first moment we saw it on a web site somewhere. You want to nitpick it? OK, sure, many guys think the front-wheel offset kills it. Whatever. The gargantuan meats and ludicrous engine make it. It's Rat Fink, Hot Wheels, and Muscle Machines, all brought to life. Pro Street meets now. A lost art, reinvigorated.

The so-called Nightmare on Any Street project was the brainstorm of Melvin Skinner of Benson, North Carolina's Fastlane Motorsports, which is a big Mustang-tuning joint. Having worked on everything from near stockers to 2,000hp street cars, Melvin has seen it all, and he wanted to create the unexpected. The result is this '07 Mustang GT-turned-GT500 that was built around the rear rubber, a set of 33x22.50-20 Mickey Thompsons. It proves that Pro Street still drops jaws, even with 20x9 and 20x16 wheels. Of course it's tubbed using a Chris Alston Chassisworks four-link and VariShock coilovers.

The clincher is the blower strutting through the aluminum hood. That Blower Shop billet 6-71 sits on a '10 5.4L with Fastlane-ported Terminator four-cam heads. Melvin used an '03/'04 Cobra intercooler and manifold, widened the intake to fit the 5.4 block, and merged the top of it into an old-school supercharger flange. The blower needed its clearances fixed for a dry setup, since the injectors introduce fuel below the supercharger rather than up top, so fuel does not cool the rotors. The Enderle bug-catcher scoop sits on an NOS nitrous injection setup, and while all the butterflies open with the throttle, only the center one feeds air into the engine. An Aeromotive in-cell A1000 shoves 35 psi to the 95-lb/hr injectors in Fore Precision Works rails. Melvin's son, Caleb, tuned it, using the stock ECM for the ignition and accessories and adding a FAST XFI and stand-alone MAP and crank trigger to control the fuel delivery and eliminate the need for a mass airflow sensor.

3/6This is our favorite view of the entire car, with the retro induction invading the modern Shelby sheetmetal. The Blower Shop huffer is an all-new piece with a billet aluminum case and proprietary rotors rather than rebuilt old GMC stuff, as is common for a 6-71. The bug-catcher only draws air through the center butterfly, and the NOS plumbing has yet to surge with glorious nitrous, but we can get over that. Even with a little fluff, it just makes us happy.

Other engine stuff: a custom accessory-drive setup using a Meziere electric water pump, stock coils, Kooks 1 7/8-inch long tubes, and a 3-inch exhaust with Kooks muffs. Internally, it has '04 Cobra cams, Total Seal rings, Eagle rods, and CP slugs for 8.7:1 compression. The oiling system uses a Moroso pan and tray, and Melvin improved the drain-back inside the block and heads. At 10 psi boost, the Fastlane chassis dyno reports 576 rwhp and 549 lb-ft. Crank it to 18 psi, and you see 771 rwhp and 730 lb-ft. So it's pretty real.

But on the street, it's almost too tame. No blower surge, no clouds of over-rich fumes, and no screaming mufflers. No land-of-the-lost, '90 Street Machine Nationals belching and overheating. It really needs louder mufflers or bigger cams—or both—to complete the illusion. Which is not really an illusion at all. This Nightmare comes to life. See more at FastlaneMotorsports.us.